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Jones, Shorter staff anxiously await arrival of 2011 squad
ROME – The anticipation is nearing an
end.
In three weeks, the Shorter University football team will report for training camp. In the meantime, the Hawks’ coaching staff is well under way in preparing to welcome the 155 veterans and newcomers for the 2011 season.
“You think you know who will be here, but things happen,” said head coach Phil Jones, whose staff will hold its pre-preseason meeting on Monday. “Getting them here and into the season – that’s when you know who you’ve got.”
The Hawks are sure to sport a sense of resurgence coming off a 2010 campaign that resulted in a 5-6 record, the first losing season for the program since its inaugural season in 2005.
“It hurt,” Jones said of last season’s outcome. “You wonder if going 0-2 against two good teams [West Alabama and Georgia State] hurt us. We knew we had to climb over that and we did come back with some big wins.
“But turnovers became our fate,” he added about Shorter’s final three Mid-South Conference games – all of them resulting in losses – in which the Hawks coughed up the football an unsettling 13 times and watched as foes recovered 10 of those fumbles.
That, however, is a statistic of the past.
As far as Jones is concerned, the new season provides new challenges and new hopes, all becoming even larger in the wake of the recent announcement that Shorter will join the NCAA Division II ranks. The decision means that this fall the Hawks will compete for a Mid-South Conference championship and a shot at an NAIA national title for the last time.
“We’re anticipating playing as a champion for a championship,” Jones stressed. “We know it’s going to be tough in our conference. There have been one or two games that will determine if you’re a champion and not just for us. There are three to four teams in there with us.”
Even before Shorter opens its 10-game schedule on Sept. 10 in Babson Park, Fla., against Webber International, the team is making sure all is in order.
The Hawks’ coaching staff remains nearly intact, Jones points out, with the only changes coming in the form of a new group of graduate assistants and the addition of Johnny Gulledge.
Gulledge, who worked with the Hawks during the team’s spring drills this year, will assist Jimmy Rosato with the defensive line. Like Rosato and inside linebacker coach Ronnie Newberry, Gulledge comes to Shorter after having a successful career as a high school coach, most recently at Adairsville High.
“He’s another guy who has done yeoman’s work as a coach,” Jones said of Gulledge. “Like Jimmy and Ronnie, he still loves to coach and gives us a valuable resource with experience.”
This season, Shorter features a roster that not only has experience, but perhaps the most depth in program history. The Hawks lost just 13 players from last year’s team to graduation.
“They all have to anticipate fighting for their position,” said Jones. “Our depth is better than it’s ever been for us.”
The addition of 40 new players who join the team as freshmen or as transfers only solidifies that depth.
“At each position we recruited, we got unanimously across the board the one we wanted,” Jones said, quickly pointing to the work put in by recruiting coordinator Paul Pitts. “We had an unreal recruiting year, the best we’ve ever had.”
And Jones is confident that all of the Hawks will arrive having adhered to the off-season conditioning program that will give the players a solid foundation to build open when preseason workouts begin.
“All of the players were given a daily workout book for the summer,” Jones said. “We’re counting on them coming back in condition and with increased strength.
“We want them to be the best they can be every day.”
